Paratactic Commons Conference

The decade that followed 9/11 witnessed a radical regression of communal energies, forcing us to live strictly in individual spheres; the fear and control society in the guise of a war on terror, the tendency of nation-states to impose their ideological agendas onto everyone and everything under their control and the conflicts and collaborations of a global consumerist economy that urges the rapid privatization of public goods have all taken a toll on the common values of human societies around the Globe. The commons that we need to regain entail a broad spectrum. They range from ecological unbalances, which result from the privatization of natural resources, to the ‘de facto’ privatization of judicial systems, which has led to the degradation of a justice that is common to all.

Meanwhile, the ever-popularizing digital media, beginning with the Internet itself as a common resource, has been a major source of inspiration in revitalizing the idea of the commons. More specifically, the capacities offered by new media have helped to re-understand that information is a “common” as well as the right to access information.

amber’12 selects as its theme “Paratactic Commons”: Can digital commons be an alternative platform to launch a political thought whose main aim is sharing, transparency, and freedom to access information? What can we learn from free software’s, copyleft movements, peer-2-peer systems, the logic of open source, and creative commons? Could the digital-commons help for the creation of another form of economy and ecology? Could humans share their common resources rather than exploit them? What kind of paratactic artistic strategies could digital commons consist of?

“Mapping the Commons in Athens and in Istanbul”
Daphne Dragona, media art curator and PhD candidate, University of Athens
Pablo de Soto, architect and PhD candidate, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Aslihan Senel, architect, design tutor, and lecturer